Cascading on Facebook
Recently in lecture, we have been discussing about different information cascades and how they effect different types of networks. This obviously applies to real world situations; one such situation where this applies are the recent trends of Facebook. First there was the ALS ice bucket challenge, where people would pour buckets of ice-water over their heads in order raise awareness and to support ALS research. This phenomenon is a classic example of an information cascade. No one actually knew how doing the ALS bucket challenge would affect his/her own popularity on Facebook, he/she looked at the success of the videos as a guidance. Since the ice bucket challenge was a resounding hit for many earlier adopters, many people later soon created an ALS ice bucket video as well. Even friends that were not very comfortable posting videos on their Facebook wall caved into peer pressure and started recording videos of them participating. This cascade lead to about $15.6 million dollars to be donated to ALS research, which was about 10 times the amount that were to be otherwise donated.
Another one of the newer trends that have been circulating Facebook, is the “Say Thanks” video for a friend. This feature of Facebook has only been recently implemented (around November 12), and yet a large number of people have been posting the same type of “Say Thanks” videos lately. This Facebook trend is based on information cascades, since users of Facebook are influenced by other friends also participating in this. Based on a person’s friends, you can conclude based on how many of this person’s friends have done the challenge, how likely that they will do the challenge. Even based on the past, with the “Look Back” videos that were introduced, the result was still massive due to information cascades. Up to 200 million users have created such videos, which clearly shows a majority of users affected by this information cascade on Facebook.
http://techcrunch.com/2014/11/12/facebook-launches-say-thanks-a-personalized-video-creation-tool-for-thanking-your-friends/
http://foxct.com/2014/11/21/say-thanks-videos-from-facebook-let-you-send-video-messages-to-friends-family/
http://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewherper/2014/08/19/think-the-ice-bucket-challenge-is-stupid-youre-wrong/